Category: Documentary

Political case study of a Kenyan mensch

MANY OF US can see the flaws in our country’s leadership. Not many of us have the balls, the centrality of total focus – and maybe the naiveté – to think we can take it on and bring a happier face to a country battered by violence and […]

Love and tenderness in a time of Aleppo

FILM REVIEW: FOR SAMA. SAY THE WORDS ‘Aleppo’ and ‘2016’ and if you have had a quarter of an ear on the news during that period, you will shiver with the memory of appalling atrocities perpetrated against Syrian civilians. In her intimate, multi-award-winning documentary, journalist Waad al-Kateab offers […]

The ecstacy of daily struggle

FILM REVIEW: CUNNINGHAM. HE REFUSED TO be known as ‘avant-garde’, but set fire to every dance cliché and rule that you can think of, in his outstanding and bold repertoire, answerable to no one. This was Merce Cunningham, celebrated in Alla Kovgan’s beautiful film, Cunningham, which features on […]

Secrets, shadows: Ethiopia’s scars

FILM REVIEW: FINDING SALLY. A WOMAN STANDS and calls the name of her long absent sister in a wide valley in Africa. The keening sound reverberates eerily, but beautifully. It is even in tone, mournful in its sense of plea. The gesture offers goosebump-raising closure to a bitter […]

Spin and the mechanics of evil

FILM REVIEW: INFLUENCE. AN ELDERLY WHITE man in a cardigan sits and smokes with his back to the camera, in the opening scene of Richard Poplak and Diana Neillie’s exceptionally slick piece of filmic journalism Influence. Lord Timothy Bell may look benign but with his amorality on his […]

The guys your parents warned you about

FILM REVIEW: VOËLVRY — THE MOVIE. THEY WERE MORE than just angry young Afrikaans-speaking men. Musicians of the ilk of Johannes Kerkorrel, James Phillips, Koos Kombuis, Bernoldus Niemand, Willem Möller and others had the edge that could force change in a country locked down by blind racist imperatives. […]